After firing several shots into his gut, I was assured of my existence. I sank like a melting piece of ice, peacefully behind the jagged rock, hiding myself. The infiltrator lay sprawled under the star-ridden sky at a hateful hostile distance of about 400 metres – the effective firing range of my LMG.

The stark simplicity of life I could see in the gushing blood stream of the enemy soldier; his warm blood filtering through the snow white nudity of the ridges. It was an imposing red seeking the gradual softness of pink.

Crouching behind a huge boulder at a frigid creek, squinting behind the innocent smoke emanating from the muzzle of my LMG, I realized that I had been dragging my left leg so long, as if it didn’t belong to me. It had become a perpetual burden to be carried along until gangrene occupies its grim of pain.

Vijay started groaning for water, – panting deliriously on the stinging snow. Lying facing the sky, on the merciless white snow-covered rocky range, I could hear Vijay’s drowsy crackled whimper for water. Shells were exploding over the area of enemy infiltration. Even at the height of 18000 feet above sea level life does not want to compromise with the last few drops to quench the ultimate thirst.

Trekking through several feet of frozen ridges  and creeks, with wuthering wind thrashing against our direction, shielding through shelling, firing and bombardments, continuous;y through more than two months, staying alive seemed to become irrelevant.

Fighting at the infantry, we staggered through frigid passes of imposing mountain ranges,  panting and sweating for some precise breath to fill our lungs. The area of infiltration covering a 160 km long stretch of jagged ridges was the only reality, Crawling and climbing, snaking through terrains seemed the only symptoms of being alive. Fear of death sustained life.

Now leaning against the huge rock I squinted at the distant peak. Scrambled  moonlight on its uneven slope raked up my hunger, reminding me, I am alive. A sun-warmed tomorrow blended in my drooping senses. Imagination of the next day helped me overcome the white nothingness of the corpses and the stark frigidity throughout the war zone.

The enemy soldier appeared to shuffle a bit. I became alert. Every time my senses tried to drift away into nowhere, my enemy rekindled the flame of my  vigour, sparks of my alertness kept my life smouldering through the void of death. Fighting The infiltrators at the snow covered ridges for over two months, life has become a fleeting butterfly being chased by the panic of dying. Every passing moment, every breath, has become a luxury, – an aesthetic pleasure.

The tossing and turning of the wounded enemy reminded me of my being alive at the cost of his painful despair. I dragged my torso crawling on my
elbows towards Vijay, senior to me in rank but never allowed me to call him “Sir”. The name plate on his uniform reflected moonlight.

My injured and fractured leg was now a dead log, soaking silence and growing heavier. I was sweating profusely and panting on the innocent naked snow, carrying my dead leg, slithering my way.

I ignored looking at the cavernous eyes of Vijay. His painful last breath had  left an aloofness in his expression. Now his lifeless pain stared at the sky. Balancing my weight on my left elbow, I fished out a 50 ml nip from his pocket. Holding it up to the moonlight I could see only a little of the liqueur
left at the bottom. Once again my fingers swam in his pocket and found a  piece of stale bread and some damp-ridden cigarettes in a crumpled packet.

In his wallet there were a piece of folded paper, with a list of handwritten contact numbers in it, a little amount of money and some medicine strips. An abruptly halved tablet crumbled and scattered like chalk dust inside the wallet; its halved form could still be identified.

Avoiding the stale aloofness of Vijay’s expression I tried to concentrate on the sharp pangs of my upsurging hunger. It kept me warm as flames warm light. I began to hope that the next morning our Air force team might detect the location, find me alive among the corpses and airlift me to our military  post. I could almost hear the shuffling of heavy booted footfalls of uniformed strides, some emergency whispers, attentive heavy breath fuming in the crispy whiteness of the morning. Each new upcoming morning, that so long had been taken for granted, now unfolded through my trance in every unnecessary details, all unimportant and unnoticed flavour of being alive.

The flipping pages of newspaper by the window table, the reading glasses on it being kept as paper-weight, the yawning, the fuming hot tea boiled thick with milk, green cardamom, ginger and little sugar, the wall clock sheltering two lizards behind it, smell of butter melting in pot in preparation for breakfast, rustling footsteps in silk embroidered gown, tinkling anklets, silver whisper of jewelry, mild floral smell of oil massaged long hair, some meaningless babblings of kids, many such neglected, innocent images came  crowding in this arid frigidity of detached living, the ordinary unnoticed  simplicity of everyday life that evades us.

I forgot my dead limb for a while and drained a few drops of liqueur into his thirsty throat. He appeared to gulp it down as if drinking fire to lit-up life. His so long suffering had achieved the ultimate destiny of transcending all pain
at the unguarded grey moment of the last breath.

Vijay’s wounded body I had carried upto this imposing height of the ridges; he was striving to overcome the loneliness of death, hoped to see more and more ordinary mornings.

I leaned against Vijay’s lifeless body for a while. My senses were closing the drooping eyelids heavy with sleep. The silver wind wuthered in my ears, numbness scattered through my senses, the continuous explosion of shelling and firing appeared distant. I could see an aloofness in the mushy semidarkness of the sky. The sky became a sheet of tangled threads – grey and white; getting heavier and heavier, gradually coming down down and  further lower, closer on my breath like a disbalanced canopy of a tent, falling and levitating through a height of perpetual distance which it could not make up. Shivering and writhing in the naked cold ice-desert, my eyelids were submerging into drowsy restfulness. Hunger pricked my inflated senses like shards of broken porcelain, not too sharp but sure. This kept me from passing out.

Balancing my torso on my left elbow, I sought for some human warmth from Vijay’s still body. His warmth had gone blue, but still his familiar face, the  smell of his struggle to hold on with life, his nearness, had provided me my voice to scream silently.

Hoping to be detected by our Air Force team before the scavenger birds could find me , I was slowly drowning into a drowsy cavernous wakefulness,  clutter of cutleries, shouting of playing children running through streets,  fluttering of sea green curtains, buzzing of crowds on the street, shops,  people traffic and such countless acts of being alive.

The droning sound of the aircraft hovering over my drifting senses, forced open my droopy eyelids, I still held my LMG in a position targeting the unfolding morning at my gunpoint.

I was quite appalled to see the enemy soldier I had fired yesterday, crawling and snaking away. Once he turned his neck to look around if he was being watched. Now I could see his face at my gunpoint. There was nothing brutal about him; only a cold heart reflected in his countenance – a heart that have
been trained not to look into the eyes of a mother. A candid shrewdness, as innocent as an animal.

He was slithering away like a wounded snake towards the periphery. The jagged smoky ridges guarded the upcoming sun, though dawn spread everywhere. I fixed my target at the nape of his neck that still upheld his head.

The hovering aircraft was closer and ready for the rescue operation. Now the morning sun at 18,000 feet on the ridges was gliding softly towards my  gunpoint, I could see the frozen sun, as if it wanted me to shoot at its frigidity. I could not see the spreading dawn among the obscure ridges any more; I was focused. I closed my left eye, further focused, straightened my shoulders, held my breath, counted one, two, three…

The wounded enemy was too slow. He could now easily be detected by our Airforce aircraft. I concentrated more and more at the nape of his neck, ignoring the back of his head. He was slowly merging with the frozen sun. He headed towards a huge boulder to conceal himself from shelling. I did not  shift my focus. The new morning glinted on the shining aloofness of the muzzle of my LMG. I again held my breath and counted one, two,  three… I began to hate his slowness, his endless slithering, at my gunpoint.

© Kakoli Ghosh

Published in FERRING LOVE, an anthology edited by Nupur Basu. https://www.amazon.in/dp/B097S38QBS/ref=cm_sw_r_wa_apa_glt_fabc_4F7CFK6MH379DFCR7CKH